Salesforce.com yesterday announced plans to acquire Model Metrics, a mobile and social cloud consulting services company, for an undisclosed amount. The deal brings to Salesforce.com a wealth of experience in mobile, social, and cloud-based design, user experience, business process alignment, and frameworks for building employee- and customer-facing applications.

The Model Metrics team will join Salesforce.com's strategic services organization, where Paul Greenberg, president of the 56 Group, says they will be a good fit. The addition of the Model Metrics staff, along with the hiring a few days ago of John Wookey, a former executive at SAP and Oracle, positions Salesforce.com well for the future, Greenberg asserts. "They’re really putting together a super team at Salesforce," he says.

The deal in general is a wise and logical one for Salesforce, Greenberg adds, noting that Salesforce "has made a firm commitment to mobile and social."

"They've been dedicated to the idea of being able to provide enterprise-quality solutions on mobile devices," he says.

George Hu, whom Salesforce just last week promoted to chief operating officer, agrees. "We are thrilled with the incredible response from customers and partners to the social enterprise vision," he said in a statement. "The addition of Model Metrics' mobile and social expertise will accelerate Salesforce.com's ability to lead the shift to the social enterprise and empower partners to develop their social enterprise practice."

Founded in Chicago in 2003, Model Metrics, has been a valuable Salesforce.com partner for years, having completed more than 1,000 Salesforce.com deployments for companies of all sizes, including some of the Fortune 100. The company has more than 500 customers.

"Our core services strategy has always been to create a thriving partner ecosystem, and this acquisition enables us to double down on that strategy in the world of the social enterprise," said Maria Martinez, executive vice president for customers for life at salesforce.com, in a statement. "With Model Metrics, our strategic services team will have more of the mobile and social capabilities required to enable and accelerate the success of our partner ecosystem."

"Salesforce.com and Model Metrics share a vision for the social enterprise," added Adam Caplan, founder and CEO of Model Metrics. "By joining salesforce.com, we can help more companies unlock the value of cloud computing with disruptive mobile and social technologies."

Greenberg also notes that the Model Metrics acquisition fits in with others that Salesforce has made in the past year or so, including the deals that brought Heroku and Radian6 into its fold. "This is in line with Salesforce's other acquisitions, which have been distinctly around mobile and social," he says. "This is a small but important acquisition that gives [Salesforce] a lot of mobile capability that it did not have a lot of before."